The real stories from inside the F1 paddock

Fernando and Felipe look ahead

Today in Madonna di Campliglio the two Ferrari race drivers had their chance to talk to the media about their seasons in 2012 and their hopes for the future. Both flew in from Brazil where at the weekend they were both racing in Massa’s Desafio Internacional das Estrelas charity karting event. Neither did very well, although Ferrari protégé Jules Bianchi won the event.

“It was a wonderful event,” Felipe said. “I didn’t go well, nor did Fernando, but we had a lot of fun.”

It is 11 years since the Brazilian made his F1 debut with Sauber. Now 31, he has won 11 of his 172 races and came so close to winning the title in 2008 that it was almost painful to watch. A few months later he was nearly killed by a piece of flying debris that put him out of racing for the second half of 2009. Since then he has returned but has struggled to be competitive against Fernando Alonso – and he has not won a race. He reckons that the Spaniard has been the toughest competitor he has had as a team-mate, but he is positive that he can still fight back.

“I want to return to winning,” he said. “I want to be competitive from the start and to be fighting for the championship.”

He says that the sudden improvement in the middle of last year was more because of changes within himself than changes with the car or the team.

“I just got better inside my brain,” he said. “It was a big change. It was about understanding that I could do it, even if 90 percent of the people did not think I could. It was about believing in myself and not having a good day and a bad day. I know that I can be a champion. That I can win races. I have changed my way of thinking and I am stronger and stronger.”

Massa expects that if the roles are reversed in the future that Alonso would support him, as he has supported Fernando.

Fernando did a fantastic championship in 2012,” he says. “We didn’t have the quickest car but he drove an incredible championship. I expect the same rivals as last year. I hope that we are in the top level and have a quick car from the start of the championship until the end.”

Alonso is also aiming for a World Championship with Ferrari. He has been with the team since 2010 and has been runner-up that year and again in 2012, but the ambition remains.

“Winning a title with Ferrari is the best thing that any driver could hope for,” he says. “It must be incredible to hold the world championship trophy wearing red. I am going to try to fight for that. It is nice to be voted the best driver of the year at the end of a season even if you don’t win. That helps to make up for the sacrifices and dedication but the goal is winning. F1 are all competitive people and I drive for the team with the strongest record in the history of F1 so we will fight for the title again and I want to be in that fight again.”

Fernando believes that Ferrari is in better shape than last year.

“I am more confident,” he says. “The regulations are more or less the same as last year so we won’t be 1.5-2 seconds off the pace as happened at the start of last year. Maybe it is impossible to be worse than last year. Formula 1 teams are very complex. One of the main components is aerodynamics and we had some problems with the Maranello wind tunnel for a year or two. We should be more confident using the Toyota wind tunnel all the time. There will be gains in consistency as a result. That is one thing. There are also things like infrastructure and creativity. Others have had ideas before we did,. We hope that with new people we are going to be the ones to be very innovative. We have total trust in our bosses. We must focus on the driving. What was missing lasrt year was a bit of performance at the beginning and in the mid championship. We were not super fast but we were consistently on the podium. We did what we had to do. If you can be on the podium that is good for the World Championship. Things happened and some of our rivals had reliability problems and so we were in front but pour level was not enough. You can look back and say that one decision or another changed the result but that is what happens. It always has that is sport. “

Alonso reckons a key area in 2013 will be the exhaust aerodynamics.

“It is not as important as it was two years ago because of the rules but it is still a fundamental area and we expect evolution in that area. The tyres are less important. They are the same for everyone.”
It is still early to say who the chief rivals will be in 2013 but Alonso reckons that the same teams will be in contention.

“I don’t know who my major opponent will be,” he admits. “It will be the driver with the best team, the best preparation and the best car. My chief rival will emerge. I think the strongest driver is Lewis Hamilton. That is a personal opinion not a political statement. He is the strongest driver on the grid and he will be strong next year. He is a supergood driver. He has won races every year in his career and I think he will win some races with Mercedes.

“McLaren is always a strong contender. It is a team with experience and a history of good cars and continuous success. They will be strong again.”

But Fernando says he would like a shorter racing season.

“It was a very long season,” he said. “We had events until December 20 and then holidays only over Christmas. There are some some additional days off coming up. I would like to see less races. We start testing February and we are then racing through to nearly December. It is many months and it is very difficult to remain consistent mentally and physically. F1 is a very good show but 19 races is OK, maybe even 18. That would help, with some more tests as well.”

Alonso says that if he is behind Felipe Massa in the World Championship he will support him.

“Sure,” he says. “It would not be the first time and not the last. We help each other continuously for the good of Ferrari. Felipe is one of the best drivers in the world as we saw at the end of 2012. I have been saying that for three years. There has been a big gap in terms of points, but I expect him to be much closer.”

\He also says that he does not mind who he has as his team-mate.

“We follow what the team decides,” he says. “It would not be a problem. I have learned from all of my team-mates. I have some good competition. We will see what happens in the future.”

In recent times Alonso has become the most popular F1 driver in terms of followers on Twitter, with more than 1.5 million fans following him, but he says that he sees this as a good thing rather than an intrusion.

“I like to tell fans how I am training; my feelings before and after races. I can show them F1 seen from the inside. OK, there are things I cannot show them, but what I like is to be able to tell them what is really happening because in the past there have been many crazy stories. It is better this way.”

For the moment there is not much that anyone can say about who will be competitive in 2013. The testing will start at the beginning of February.

“You get an idea in testing but we have seen cars that are quick in testing and not quick in the first race, and we have seen the other way round as well,” says Massa. “You don’t know in the first week of testing but in the second and third you begin to see who will be quick and in the last week you have a better idea who will be at the front in Australia.”

Perhaps Joe, If you could just touch on the fitness level these drivers (athletes) must maintain, then maybe the silly comment above would be put into better light. I don’t think I know anyone who would want to work 11 months straight and maintain the fitness level required of an F1 driver.

We knew it was ‘in the head’ with Filipe. A cynic would suggest he got it together when he realised he needed a new contract. If he performs in 2013 as he did in the latter stages of 2012, people may realise that while last year’s Ferrari was not the best car on the grid, it was much better than people are making out. Then we can stop all the ‘Alonso is a super hero’ stuff. It was a big effort by Alonso, no question; it was no Senna versus the Williams cars in ’93, though. That was a herculean effort!

No question. It was almost supernatural gaining the points he did at the beginning and mid part of the season in a car that was a disaster in Q1-Q3 but reasonable in the race.similar in many ways to the McLaren in 2011.
I think he drove less well towards the end; witness how well Massa drove in a car that ostensibly was a “worse” car. I think his comment about the length of the season alludes to exactly this point: FA was probably weary of the mental effort required to get the thing on the podium.

Absolutely spot on. Alonso belongs to that very rare group of F1 drivers who are able to take a car to places where it shouldn’t really be. Senna definitely had it (Toleman, Lotus and, at times at McLaren); Schumacher at Jordan in 1991 and in his early days at Ferrari; although people won’t thank me for saying it, Mansell also ‘had it’ at times, for example, with the Judd-engined Williams and, possibly You could argue that Villeneuve (Gilles) was provided with some truly awful equipment by the scuderia which he was able to drag along, providing of course that he finished the race. No doubt about it, Alonso IS one of the all time greats-imagine what he’d have done during the past 3 seasons in a Red Bull! What a frightening thought.

Martin, the things which go on when a person gets a blow to the head are so much still unknown, though since the last Iraq business, the American medics have been very seriously paying attention, with appropriate (to what I can tell, substantial) resources, and so we learn all the time. To consider that what happened to Felipe as just a higher order executive kind of decision just ignores the countless things his body is doing to re-wire itself, which I think cannot be discounted. I myself think I underwent a kind of personality change when once gratuitously bludgeoned by a yuf with a baseball bat (and that was by no means a heavy blow) I only really recognized it in retrospect, as in “Hmm, that year doesn’t fit” . . nor in fact did the one after, even thinking about that time is a sorta out of body experience. I think it utterly unfair to evaluate what FM is doing or not doing in any kind of way. If (well my mom thinks he’s a dear) he’s been thought of as a mummy’s boy, that sort of closeness I doubt will have hindered his recovery, whereas maybe someone who is a loner, more self – reliant, may have taken reduced function much more personally. My 2 cents, the more why I’m happy to have him in action.

I can’t be the only one thoroughly bored and disillusioned with the small core of people who crowd every possible forum and bulletin board they can just to repeatedly dismiss Alonso’s 2012. Haven’t these people got better things to do?

Last year you’d watch the McLarens and Red Bulls slice through corners like they were on rails. Then Alonso would come through and it looked like his car was powered by Mexican jumping beans. If not a Herculean effort, then certainly an extraordinary one.

Prior to last season, I was no fan of Alonzo. I thought he had the cold-hearted ruthlessness of Michael but without as much talent. He proved me wrong about the latter part.

He demonstrated the ability to be whoever the car requires him to be. Not many can do that. Mario could. Not sure if Michael could. Montoya could do it in brief patches but he lacked the attention span. Alonzo did it for entire races for most races in a long season. Best display I ever saw.

Joe, if the Autosport website guys are there with you, can you tell them that they are taking the biscuit now with the “Team X announces launch date” stories. Cynical blatant wasting of the limited free stories. Do they realise this will cause reader to flee the website?

I can’t help but think that those “articles” are plan poor SEO as well. I mean if someone is searching for “Ferrari F1 launch 2013”, what does it matter if you have 20 choices to get the news? But if a page gets crawled with that phrase, with actual content, you are going to get more links, more readers, longer attention. JavaScript can easily “heat map” where mice linger and clicks drop, and though I do not advocate gratuitous use of JavaScript, it’s a thing of life, with jquery, and Autosport’s “portal” style main page is exactly what I would be continuously testing. For me, those “articles” / new items are not so much off putting as just announcing they do the same thing as a host of non journalist F1 websites, and that is the greater danger for them. Used to be great to have a weekly fix, back when print was the sole channel, but a shadow of its former self, in my eyes, only sneak a peek in the library, now, and there’s efforts out there, some very new, Scarbs comes to mind, as does another, by a reader here, worthy of attention, if I want variety and angles. Steak, straight up, is, of course, IMO, happily provided by our host.

In recent times Alonso has become the most popular F1 driver in terms of followers on Twitter, with more than 1.5 million fans following him, but he says that he sees this as a good thing rather than an intrusion.

“I like to tell fans how I am training; my feelings before and after races. I can show them F1 seen from the inside. OK, there are things I cannot show them, but what I like is to be able to tell them what is really happening because in the past there have been many crazy stories. It is better this way.”

It would behoove all involved in F1 if they had the Thursday of every race weekend as a testing and evaluation day. Lower and improved testing costs, track time for rookie drivers etc, etc. This is a necessity with evolving technologies as opposed to the start of the season rule change testing and evaluation sessions. Friday and Saturday should be for race brain and vehicle set up not evaluating technology development.
Probably flogging a dead horse instead of a prancing one.

Joe, off topic. But there are rumour stating Enstone squad failing to land the Honeywell deal. There are no better person to validate on such rumours except you Joe. Kindly shed some tips on this event !!

I think he is finally recovering from having his skull fractured (through his helmet, imagine the force of the projectile), that injury was far worse than was disclosed or possibly understood. Nice to see the competitive Felipe reemerge

Well it seems might fluffy and heart warming at this Ferrari soirée. Lots of nice, pc, supportive comments coming from all angles. If the Ferrari car is not at least close to the ultimate pace in the first quarter of this season, I can assure you there will be blood on the streets. From Santander to the team, from Alonso to the team, from Montezemolo to everyone, from Domenicali to the wind tunnel, from tsifosi to Alonso / team, from media to Renato, etc. This facade will turn ugly and quickly.

People/sponsors support Ferrari for more than just Championship success. Sure, it makes a difference, but even Williams’ decade of horror in the 2000’s only recently caught up with them re: sponsors pulling money. They seem to be back on track on that front, now, anyway. People want to be associated with the history and glamour of Ferrari. I don’t think anyone will pull sponsorship because Ferrari doesn’t produce.

One has to agree with Marko that in a way Alonso is political in everything he says or doesn’t say:
– “The strongest driver is Hamilton and McLaren is always a strong contender.” Not a single word on RedBull or Vettel?
– “Ok, there is things I can not show to my 1.5 million twitter fans”. Eat that Mr Strongest Driver…

Oh, I don’t know… imagine something causes FA to miss several races, falling way behind in points, while at the same time Massa is in the running… I can see FA being a company man for the remainder of such a season… special circumstances, etc…

Joe, I said in the previous post that Alonso would come armed with another barbed message for RBR. We all agree on Alonso’s merits, but the way he feels he has to snub and slight Vettel at every opportunity is coming across as a definite weakness.
I’m impressed that Seb does not feel he has to respond in like manner.

Joe–I was at your ‘Chat with Joe’ in Montreal and you said much the same thing about Vettel then — and I agreed with it. But after this season he’s starting to win me over. You can only drive what they give you, and if it happens to be the best car in the race then so be it. He showed me something coming from the back of the pack on more than one occasion. Great car or no.

Lewis in a Red Bull vs Vettel, my money would be on Hamilton. Alonso is simply stating he feels Hamilton ultimately is the superior driver. There are lots of fans that would agree.

Joe, my question is when Fernando suggests Hamilton is the strongest driver on the grid does he mean this in terms of competion he faces or is he including himself if the group of drivers Hamilton is stronger than? I would think the former knowing his character. Any thoughts?

Just in general, I think the drift of talk about Alonso being political simply ignores that some people – shock, horror – think differently about the world. All my life I’ve been accused of acting politically at times I am quite sure what I was doing (with hindsight and proof) was either a-political or shooting myself in both feet, or simply without much thought given at all. Bit by bit, I got the idea, that my accusers (of my alleged political behaviour) were in fact more likely to be promoting a agenda themselves. Took me well into my thirties to stop taking things so literally. If that sounds off for someone hailing from advertising, well, consider that advertising is a discipline of directing other’s attention, and that discipline may not equal personal character. If the character drives that and extends to work, I do not believe you can do a good job.

So RBR bods calling Fernando a would be Prince, are using the sometimes historic impression of Ferrari as a political animal, (with possible side swipe at Luca) to detract from his being a driver of genuine threat, threat that was incredibly well executed in 2012. Now that is misdirection. Apparently it’s been rather successful, and timed with the new PR appointment, on which TJ13 has a interesting take, oooh, the author of The Prince might himself have given a little star on RBR’s report card.

Alonso is asked a question and gives an honest answer, one that many observers would agree with, namely that in his opinion Hamilton is the most dangerous (talented) driver on the grid. And people take this as some deliberate attempt to put Vettel down! It has nothing to do with Vettel, the number of world championships one has does not necessarily relate to overall quality of the driver. If the question had been for a top three you would likely have found Vettel in there.

Plus does anyone think Vettel would care about what Alonso says? He will look at the three WDC trophies he has, and take out the picture of Adrian Newey he keeps in his wallet and not worry about anything a mere two-time champion says.